Things Past
by Photogirl1890
Summary: A P/T story that follows on from events in "Memorial". Written for the VAMB Secret Santa 2014 exchange.


Disclaimer: Star Trek belongs to Paramount/CBS. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: This one was written for the 2014 VAMB Secret Santa exchange. **Sareki02**'s request called for "A P/T story that deals with the events in Memorial." I'm very pleased that it enabled me to write something set in mid-season six given that practically all of my past writing has been based earlier in _Voyager_'s journey (and even before that).

A big thank you to **Delwin **for beta reading and encouragement (and for the nudge I needed to sign up in the first place).

Rating: T

###

**Things Past**

It was hardly the first time something traumatic had come between them. Tom needed more than ten fingers to count off all the events that had transpired to cause friction in his relationship with B'Elanna – a relationship that had always been tempestuous. This latest incident and the behaviour it had caused him to exhibit was just another link on the end of a long chain that included such tribulations as Steth, B'Elanna's depression, a difference of opinion over the use of the Moset hologram, B'Elanna's insistence on re-creating her near-death experience on the Barge of the Dead. Alice…

And that list didn't include all the times one of them had faced serious danger without the other by their side – the times when fate had threatened to separate them permanently. Irreversibly.

He and B'Elanna would get past this, Tom was sure of that. But he was going to have to make the first move in repairing the breach. Soon.

Standing in the shower with the power turned up to its maximum setting, he let the sonic waves beat against his skin for minute after long minute. If only those waves could get inside his head and cleanse his mind of the images that wouldn't fade – graphic visuals of the dead and the dying on Tarakis – and of the way he'd reacted when B'Elanna had tried to comfort him. The Tom who'd opened fire on those Nakan civilians might not have been the real Tom, but the Tom who'd fired his mouth off at B'Elanna had been. The best the shower could do, however, was to refresh his body, to give him at least some sense of the reinvigoration he'd been missing after several days of sleeplessness and a perpetually empty stomach.

After beaming back from the surface of the planet where the monument now functioned as its creators had intended, Tom had sat behind _Voyager_'s helm to punch in the coordinates that would take the ship away from the system and back on her heading towards the Alpha Quadrant. The Captain had been quick to offer Tom, Harry and Chakotay the opportunity to take some downtime as soon as they materialised on the transporter pad. But it had been important to Tom to finish his shift – to be the one to take the ship out of Tarakis orbit. To have that measure of control.

He ordered the computer to switch from sonic to steaming water. With the power and temperature turned to maximum his rations would run out in just a couple of minutes, but he could imagine the heat razing away every last trace of the planet from his skin – just in case the sonic waves had missed anything. Looking down to his left bicep, it still surprised him to detect no evidence of a wound, not even when he palpated the muscle between his forefinger and thumb. There was no hint of any tissue damage beneath. It ached nevertheless.

When the rush of water ebbed to a trickle and then a mere drip, Tom stepped out and towelled off. It was good to be out of uniform. Over the last few days he'd not taken off the red and black he was proud to wear, the uniform that, six years ago, he'd thought he would never put on again. The little sleep he had managed to achieve since the first hallucinations had come upon him had been won sitting back fully clothed in his easy chair. His vacant staring at the wall had been interspersed by brief but welcome snatches of dreamless slumber. But he'd been wearing that uniform during the massacre. It made the implanted memories seem all the more genuine. Had he and his three companions from _Voyager_ been attired like the rest of Saavdra's soldiers, it would have been easier to believe that these were other people's memories, that he and his crewmates' faces had been projected onto other people's bodies.

He grabbed his robe from its hook on the bathroom wall and pulled it on, moving then to procrastinate in front of the replicator. His usual first choice when feeling the need to eat for comfort would be, as B'Elanna had previously suggested, pizza. But it didn't feel right ordering pizza right now. He opted instead for a couple of slices of toast (extra thick) with peanut butter (extra crunchy), taking the plate with him to the sofa.

The television set glared at him, the remote control pushing into his thigh when he sat down without checking that the cushion was clear. Picking up the remote with his free hand, he brushed his thumb over the power button and held it there.

The TV really was the perfect homecoming present. He'd always liked the look of these early sets: what they lacked in picture size and quality they more than made up for with their antique charm. This was how the old cartoons were supposed to be viewed. Not on some ultra-high-definition holodeck movie screen. It was the same with the twentieth century jazz and the rock and roll recordings that he had stored in his personal music database. A few snap and crackles at the beginning of each song – replicating the sound of the old vinyl players of the era – added a sense of authenticity. He could blank out his surroundings and pretend he really was back in the twentieth century. Perhaps that vivid imagination he had when it came to historical recreations had been a curse with the Tarakis situation, had made his experience of the massacre all the more explicit. Chakotay didn't seem as traumatised as many others – remarkable given the comparable ordeal he'd undergone the year before last at the hands of the Vori. Neelix seemed calmer since the Captain had given the order for the transmitter to be repaired. Harry, like Tom, was finding it hard to understand that order but focusing on his part in the work had settled his nerves.

Tom had to make sure that B'Elanna's thoughtful gift wouldn't be forever tainted by the events of the last few days. He needed to get rid of the bad association that had been formed, and now was as good a time as any to make that happen.

With the neural suppressant that the Doc had given each member of the crew still active in his system, Tom was fairly confident that turning on the TV would not cause an overwhelming relapse into the heat of battle. Nevertheless, when he pressed his thumb down to activate the small screen it was with caution. He flinched when the audio first blared out from the tinny speakers in the sides of the set, audio that accompanied the picture of a prowling blue/grey anthropomorphic domestic cat. Keeping the remote firmly held in his hand, he lifted a slice of toast with the other and took a bite. And then another.

Out of interest he flicked through the other channels. Not particularly taken with the soccer game and finding the gunfight in the cowboy movie a little too hard hitting for the moment, he switched back to the cartoons.

Not that violence didn't feature heavily in those: in the first short film, the feline star of the show was strapped to a firework by his nemesis, a crafty and somewhat sadistic brown mouse – and that in retribution for the cat's attempt to kill the mouse by means of an axe and a hammer. The cartoon that followed featured a gang of brightly attired superheroes, flying, raging and fighting their way through a pre-World War III New York. Tom watched this one more closely, wondering if he could borrow some of the plot points to overcome the writer's block that had been holding up the next episode of Captain Proton. And then, after advertisements for canned corn, hair gel, and cigarettes, came another animation – made later than the preceding two judging by the style – in which a group of cat-like humanoids battled a bandage-wrapped undead sorcerer. The smallest of the good guys bore a strange resemblance to Neelix.

And Tom couldn't help but laugh.

###

_You know where to find me. _

It had been two whole days since she'd uttered those words, but he hadn't yet sought her out.

B'Elanna and her engineering teams had been busy in the intervening time – busy programming the warning buoy that Janeway had decreed would be placed in orbit of Tarakis to warn any approaching ships of the memorial's presence, busy repairing the synaptic transmitter within the obelisk, and busy recharging its power cells so that it would function as intended, properly transmitting the memories in the correct sequence, for at least another three hundred years.

With many of her team placed on light duty by the Doctor, traumatised as they were by the massacre they'd been forced to experience in graphic detail, B'Elanna had been busier than most. The neurogenic pulses had affected _Voyager_'s human contingent and Neelix the most. The Vulcans, Bolians, and B'Elanna – with her part-Klingon physiology seeming to ameliorate the transmitter's effects – had only experienced very vague impressions of the massacre and only while asleep. Tasking Vorik to head up the team working down on the surface with Harry and Seven, B'Elanna had focused her own attentions on preparing the buoy in the shuttle bay.

She'd thought about Tom while she worked – thought about him a lot. She'd caught a glimpse of him from across the mess hall as he'd toyed with a plate of casserole and not eaten one bite, Harry at his side and Neelix parked opposite both equally uninterested in their meals. She'd passed him and Chakotay in the corridor outside transporter room one, exchanging pleasantries with them both but not stopping to start a conversation. It wasn't that she couldn't think what to say to Tom – she had more than enough ideas of where to start when he eventually made contact. Her failure to approach him was due more to a fear of rejection. And not just because a rejection would be hurtful to her, but because another rejection would give him something else to feel guilty about, and she knew how guilty he must be feeling already. She knew, because she knew him. It was far better to be patient and wait until he was ready to approach her. And he would be. Soon.

So, on finishing her shift only two hours overdue, she headed to her quarters, kicking off her boots and curling up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a trashy twentieth century romance novel she'd happened across during her research into the television set – to unwind for a bit before working out what to have for dinner and whether that dinner would be best eaten here in her quarters or in the mess hall.

Given how much 'home cooked grub' (to quote one of Neelix's latest favourite puns) she'd ingested from the mess hall recently, a date with her replicator seemed the more tempting option.

The book was a little tame by her usual standards, full of enough syrupy metaphors to cause hyperglycaemia, and with characters so preposterous that they made the Doctor's original holographic family seem utterly convincing. But she needed a good laugh and so persisted with it, highlighting the most lurid passages to show Tom. A good laugh would benefit him too.

After a while, however, the improvement in her mood began to wane, her mind harkening back to the previous incidences of alien memory tampering that had involved her and Tom. They'd been lucky to come through as well as they had on those occasions. Back in the early days of _Voyager_'s journey, she and Tom had barely spoken outside of their duties. But, from what he'd told her more recently – after her own experience with the Enaran elder, Jora Mirell – Tom had not suffered any permanent brain damage from the neural implants the Banean authorities had forced on him. Once vindicated of Tolen Ren's murder, Tom had been able to put the episode behind him, albeit with another experience of prison on his record.

Disgusted that the Enaran leadership had covered up the extermination of the Regressives, B'Elanna had been insistent that she passed along Mirell's shared memories to the engineer, Jessen, in order that the truth about the atrocity be made known. The outrage B'Elanna had felt at the Regressives' treatment had far outweighed any umbrage she'd taken at not being asked her consent before Mirell's memories had started appearing within her dreams.

Then there'd been the Mari with their engramatic purging. Who knew what they would have made of the Tarakis monument. There were more than a few _Voyager_ crewmen that might be glad of the Mari's memory erasing technology at the moment, despite the risk of neurological damage. But, Banean neural implants aside, once embedded in the mind, memories weren't supposed to be meddled with.

Whoever had designed the Tarakis memorial might have been a bit over zealous when it came to choosing the amount of detail to include in the transmitted memories. Whoever built the thing should have given it a more robust power source and added a failsafe so that if the neurogenic pulses started to transmit in an improper sequence, the transmitter would completely shut down. But, now that _Voyager_'s crew had taken those memories on board, B'Elanna was sure that the only way forward was to accept them for what they were and try to deal with that.

Janeway, in this instance, was right: it would have been wrong to deactivate the transmitter. Repairing it was the lesser of two evils.

Her stomachs beginning to grumble, B'Elanna put down the PADD she'd been reading from, collecting her now empty mug to be recycled in the replicator. And then, before she could order herself some dinner, her door chime sounded.

###

She wasn't expecting to see him tonight, he could see it in her eyes as the door to her quarters slid open, hear it in her voice as she uttered a surprised "Hi" then stood aside to let him in.

He echoed the greeting, bringing his hand around from behind his back to present her with the single red rose he'd freshly replicated. Somewhat surprisingly considering her part-Klingon heritage, B'Elanna had always had a liking for flowers. They'd helped get Tom out of many a minor patch of trouble in the past, and, while this latest trouble was rather more serious than showing up late for a holodeck date or spilling coffee on Toby the Targ, he figured it would still be worthwhile to make the gesture.

Careful to avoid the thorns (in hindsight, he should have thought to specify their removal) she took it from him, lips curling slightly in a hint of a smile as her searching gaze returned to his face. "Thanks. But you didn't have to."

"I've been … difficult. I'm sorry."

"It wasn't exactly your fault."

"But it wasn't yours either."

Unlike him she hadn't changed into casual clothing. Knowing her, she'd not long finished her shift even though it was approaching nineteen hundred. Tom wouldn't wish to admit it out loud (B'Elanna had always claimed the title of 'hardest working department' for her own team) but _Voyager_'s engineers put in half as many hours again as the average conn officer, and that given that those qualified to fly the ship numbered only in single figures.

Wandering over to her closet, she returned with a vase, setting it down on the low table in front of her sofa and placing the flower inside. "Have you eaten?" She gestured to the replicator, adding quickly, "I'm not nagging, it's just that I was about to fix myself something."

Having followed up the peanut butter toast with a bucket of popcorn and, inspired by one of the TV commercials, a bottle of gassy twentieth century recipe cola, he was feeling a little bloated. "Maybe later, thanks," he told her, keen to move on to the topic that had firmly decided him to call on her this evening – to not put off their reconciliation any longer. "And I never actually thanked you properly for the TV, did I? That was bad of me."

She shrugged. "You weren't yourself."

"But before that. It was so perfect that I got a little distracted. In the future we can enjoy it together. We'll go through the ship's database and find some things you'll enjoy."

Pensive for a moment – possibly struggling to contain a mildly caustic retort along the lines of 'a little?' – she took a step backwards then sat down, staring at her hands as she said, "I'm sorry that it triggered the hallucinations."

Tom moved quickly to join her on the sofa. "I was always going to get those anyway. It was just unfortunate timing." When she didn't speak again he prompted, "You must have saved up a lot of replicator rations."

That brought a smile to her face, albeit one punctuated with a grimace. "I ate Chell's cooking three times a day for the two weeks you were gone."

"And how was that?"

"Well, it made a change from the usual menu – no Alfarian hoof shavings or leola root. But Chell forgets that we don't all benefit from a Bolian digestive system and that food not properly stored starts to become hazardous to most people's health after a while." She snorted a laugh. "It was kind of nostalgic. For the Maquis, I mean. Furry bread, putrid butter… And it got him out from under my feet in engineering, so that was a bonus."

"I expect Neelix is still dealing with the fallout in the galley."

B'Elanna raised an eyebrow. "Let's hope it's not literally."

With the atmosphere between them suitably warmed, Tom felt some of the tension he'd been carrying in his shoulders and neck melt away. He wasn't quite sure how he'd expected B'Elanna to react to his apology. Her track record when it came to granting him easy forgiveness was chequered. But, underneath that thin layer of uncertainty, he'd had faith that she would understand his behaviour had been prompted by extreme circumstances.

Leaving his side to head for the replicator, B'Elanna ordered a plate of fried chicken with salad and, without asking his preference on the matter, two large glasses of Ktarian merlot, 2282. She brought the wine over first, setting both glasses down onto the table before making a return trip to fetch the food.

As she dug in to her meal, she studied him again, saying between mouthfuls, "You look a little better."

Tom reached for his drink and took a sip, the smooth taste of the merlot taking him back two years to the previous time they'd enjoyed this vintage. She'd made the choice deliberately: it was a good association. "I'm moving in the right direction," he said honestly. "I wouldn't say no to a good night's sleep though."

"Why not ask the Doctor to give you something?"

"Maybe. I'll see what happens tonight."

In Tom's experience, the trouble with sedatives – even the highly advanced drugs in Starfleet Medical's twenty fourth century arsenal – was that he would still dream and, furthermore, when he did awaken, it would be in a state of semi-paralysis. That struggle to move in those first waking moments – to shake off whatever terror might have come to visit in the night – would send his already troubled mind into blind panic, negating the benefit of however many hours of sleep he had managed to achieve. Sedatives were fine for getting the body back onto ship's time after a routine and stress-free away mission, or to counteract the effects of stimulants in alien foods, but to induce sleep when that sleep was unforthcoming due to psychological trauma, the drugs definitely had a downside.

Not to mention that he associated using them with the first weeks after the accident at Caldik Prime, when he'd been a regular visitor to the _Exeter_'s sickbay to cadge whatever medications he could in a vain effort to numb the guilt.

"It'll take time," he continued, "but I know I can get over this."

It was good to say these things out loud. Somehow when such an affirmation went in through his ears it seemed to stick better than when it merely rattled around inside his skull, fighting for dominance with all the deep-seated fears that lurked there.

Plate balanced in her lap, B'Elanna twisted to face him. "Remember when we first talked … really talked after you found out about my … holodeck activities?"

Tom nodded. "Of course."

"So, let's practice what you preached to me then: we'll get through this together. Don't shut me out."

He held her gaze, swallowing through the lump in his throat.

B'Elanna broke the silence. "And I think I know just the place where we can start."

###

"But you hate this program."

"I wouldn't say I _hate_ it. I do prefer it like this though: without the characters online."

B'Elanna had to admit that Fair Haven's scenery did have a certain rustic appeal. Without the irritating locals to get in the way, the brick-paved central streets and the steep dirt trail up to the medieval castle were pleasant routes on which to take a stroll. If less program memory were taken up with all the different holographic personalities, perhaps the railway line could be expanded, or the virtual environment extended to encompass the small islands that dotted the horizon as seen from the wind-whipped Atlantic harbour. The rugged shores of western Ireland were perfect for coasteering, if a little colder than the climates B'Elanna usually preferred.

But Tom hadn't had extreme sports on the agenda when he'd thought up Fair Haven.

"It's the characters that give the place its atmosphere though," he protested. "Without them the town is just … like a set from the old movies. All frontage but no depth. No real spirit."

Tom would not be satisfied until he had the program reconstructed to all of its 'former glory'. His two week away mission and the ensuing turmoil had left his original estimate of seven weeks to get Fair Haven's characters back where they belonged looking unattainable. Despite her lack of affection for the likes of Seamus, Milo, and whatever the other oddballs were called, B'Elanna would happily immerse herself in the reprogramming of the town and its inhabitants if it helped with Tom's recovery. Before the away mission, he'd successfully restored the general terrain and the exteriors of the main buildings. But, with the exception of the bar with the harp on its sign, which was one of the few original program elements to have escaped erasure in the neutronic wavefront, those buildings were still empty shells.

They only had the holodeck for an hour this evening. B'Elanna had bartered with Tabor for the privilege, promising him the pick of the duty schedule for a whole week if he'd be willing to forgo the game of springball he'd had planned. Tom had some holodeck time reserved for tomorrow, but B'Elanna hadn't wanted to wait that long before getting him down here, into surroundings that both stimulated and relaxed him. So, as soon as dinner was done, she'd called up the schedule for both holodecks and struck her bargain.

"I'm not really in the best shape for anything too physical right now," Tom had warned her, when she'd refused to reveal which program she intended to load. Perhaps he'd suspected a trip to Tahiti was on the cards for a session of water-skiing. Or that she'd intended to challenge him to a vigorous game of hoverball.

"We're only taking a casual walk," she'd replied. "Somewhere you'll like, I promise."

He'd given her his trust, and, outside the holodeck, she'd called up _Paris 042_, leading Tom through the doors so that they found themselves on the street outside Fair Haven's train station. Or an unmarked and unrefined building sat next to a railway platform, at least.

"If I work on filling in some of the building interiors, that would free you up to work on your holographic friends," she offered. "What do you think?"

Eyes widening, Tom was silent for a moment, his expression betraying his uncertainty. "It, uh, sounds like a very kind offer. But, do you know much about late nineteenth century Irish furnishings?"

"If I can access the ship's library and pick out the right components to build a mid-twentieth century TV set, I'm sure I can do the same to find a few old chairs or tables or … whatever. You can tidy up after me if I make any unforgivable errors."

In truth she wasn't as confident that she could make such a good a job of it as she claimed to be. Tom was such a perfectionist with such clear ideas of how he wanted his programs to look and feel that there were bound to be flaws in anything she contributed. But, if even half of what she helped him with was acceptable, that would cut the time it took before he could open the program to the rest of their crewmates. And Fair Haven had proved to be an exceptionally popular retreat from the daily grind for so many of _Voyager_'s crew, surpassing perhaps even Sandrine's in that regard. Tom took great satisfaction from that, and he had every right to be proud of himself. Neelix might hold the title of morale officer, but, these days, Tom Paris was his unofficial deputy.

"It was only a thought," she went on, beginning to feel a little foolish now as Tom continued to chew his lip rather than exhibit much enthusiasm for her proposal. "If you'd prefer to keep working on it by yourself, I won't take offence. Or maybe Harry would be more help to you. He spent a lot more time in here than I did, and –"

"No," Tom interrupted, a smile beginning to blossom on his lips. "It would be nice to spend some time together in here." And the smile broadened into a wide grin after he added, "You probably won't want to visit the place again once the locals have resurfaced."

B'Elanna offered a mischievous smirk in return. "I suppose I could be tempted by the arm wrestling competition that Harry keeps bragging about. Though if he's the reigning champion, I'm not sure that the holograms would give me much of a challenge."

"And, I don't know that Doctor Gilroy could cope with a spate of fractured holographic humeri," Tom replied with a faint and fleeting frown. "Medicine was pretty basic back then. You know they hadn't even discovered X-rays? Though they did have plaster casts and rudimentary anaesthesia."

"So, where exactly can I start?" B'Elanna asked, conscious that the time was steadily moving on.

"I guess we could tour the town together now. I could talk you through what the interior of each building should look like. If you pay attention to the living quarters above Sullivan's bar, you'll see what kinds of things are appropriate for the bedrooms in the Ox and Lamb. Then there are the fittings in the bakery and the butchers. And the tobacco store. I have the original plans for those on a PADD in my quarters. You'd just have to cross reference my notes with the database files, but I can tell you which key words would make your searches more specific. Then there's the post office and the church. And the school. Again, I still have the outlines for those. And Harry mentioned he'd like Maggie to have a proper store this time rather than just that cart in the street. But I think I should set that up…"

"Let's prioritise," B'Elanna broke in, as Tom finally paused to take a necessary breath. As much as it was heartening to see his eyes shining with excitement, her engineer's mind was already breaking down the problem into its constituent components. "What's most important in order to get the program useable again?"

"Hmm. I'd say the Ox and Lamb. It's a calmer establishment than Sullivan's. Somewhere for people to go for a quiet drink and a traditional meal rather than for entertainments."

"Fine. Take me there."

Hooking her elbow around the arm Tom extended to her, they set off downhill towards the centre of town, the sun warming their backs and a breeze fanning their faces, bringing with it the pleasant scent of hay and the somewhat less delightful smell of manure. Trust Tom to think of a detail like that. He must have reinstated the local livestock when he restored the fields to the edge of the town.

"I'm trying to see this as an opportunity to construct a new and improved version of the program rather than dwelling on how much of it I've lost," he told her, as they reached the post office with its bright green mailbox standing sentry outside. He paused there, and B'Elanna waited patiently alongside as he surveyed the scene ahead. "I just wish I'd been able to save more of the characters. I didn't only put hours into developing each individual personality, I made sure they'd complement each other. You know, really make an interesting ensemble."

"At least you don't have to make the Captain a new holographic boyfriend."

When Tom bristled beside her, B'Elanna realised she should have kept that quip – good intentioned as it was – firmly canned. "The guy from the pub," she blundered on, knowing she was only digging a deeper hole, but with her traitorous mouth running away from her as she pointed a finger towards the bar and pressed, "His matrix was one of the elements you managed to save, right? Along with the building itself?"

Tom's tone was cool when he spoke, devoid of any enthusiasm for his creation. "Yeah. Michael's still intact."

"But, Janeway's not your favourite person right now. So, if you had lost his matrix, it wouldn't be at the top of the list for redevelopment."

Releasing her grip on his arm, she swivelled to look up at Tom's face. Unable or unwilling to meet her gaze, he stared off over her head into the distance, jaw vice-tight. Finally, with a sigh, he reached around to the small of her back, tipping his head towards the wooden bench outside the Ox and Lamb. Letting him steer her across to it, they sat down in tandem.

"You think she did the right thing, don't you?" Tom asked. "Ordering the transmitter to be fixed and recharging the power supply."

B'Elanna had known they'd have this conversation eventually, but had been counting on the fact that she'd have more time to formulate an eloquent and diplomatic justification for her views. Instead she could only start by deflecting, "I wish there was no need for the memorial to exist in the first place. And I wish you'd never gotten in range of it, but… if Janeway had ordered us to deactivate it, then I think that would have been the wrong call."

"Forcing innocent passers-by to live through a massacre they had no part in is wrong too," Tom countered quietly. "Not every space traveller has the benefit of Starfleet training or medical assistance to help take the edge off the hallucinations."

"But with the warning buoy in place and the transmitter fixed to send out the pulses in correct sequence, visitors to the system can make an informed choice and, if they decide to proceed, they'll receive the memories coherently."

"The buoy could fail before the transmitter does."

"I gave it a promethium power cell. It shouldn't be depleted for a thousand years."

"Scavengers could come by and steal it for parts or its scrap value."

B'Elanna had to concede that was a possibility. "But, the same is true of the obelisk and the transmitter inside," she suggested.

"And what about Naomi?" Tom continued, his tone still level but increasing in volume. "If she wasn't half-Ktarian she could be catatonic now. Those memories would traumatise a young mind for life – or, worse, some kid could see all that violence and find it inspiring. Remember that big news story a few years back? The kid from New Berlin who went on a shooting spree with his Mom's phaser rifle after accessing an R-rated holoprogram."

B'Elanna didn't recall the story, but she'd not much bothered to stay abreast of events in Sector 001 after leaving the Academy and the Sol system behind.

Absently rubbing his left shoulder – (was that the side where he'd thought he'd been shot?) – Tom stared hard into her eyes, waiting for her next defence. Clearly he'd spent a great deal of time considering all sorts of eventualities.

"Look, it's not ideal, I know," she said. "But, if we'd shut down the transmitter, those colonists would be forgotten forever. It's not like the obelisk is on a tourist trail or…"

Seeing his jaw drop with incredulity, she checked herself, realising she'd made a calamitous slip of the tongue. Again. "Shit. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that _we_ would forget them. Obviously you never will and nor will any of the rest of us." _Shit._

Luckily for her, Tom was in a much better frame of mind than he'd been a couple of days previously. "It's all right. I know what you meant," he said. "And I get that exposing the truth about war crimes is important to you. Hell, it's important to me to. Of course it is. But, if you'd experienced the Nakan massacre like I had to, you might agree with me that we should have turned the transmitter off permanently. No amount of remembering can bring those people back to life. The deactivated obelisk alone should be enough, whatever the Captain thinks. What gave her the right to make that decision?"

"She's the captain."

"_Our_ captain. She's not captain of the whole Quadrant."

Which was very true, despite what Janeway might sometimes wish to believe.

"I'm sorry. I brought you here to take your mind off things."

"And you have."

"But we've talked more about that damn memorial than about Fair Haven."

Tom shrugged. "We needed to. And it's OK that we disagree on this. Maybe if I'd seen some of the things you saw in the Maquis, I'd feel differently."

A memorial like the one on Tarakis could be a real eye opener for those Cardassians that preferred to ignore what happened during the occupation of Bajor – or what happened to the settlers in the DMZ. But she decided to keep that thought to herself. If Tom wanted to talk further about Tarakis and its aftermath, she would listen. Encouraging further debate, however, was not something that she really had a mind to do today, even though he was right: it was OK that their opinions differed on this.

They sat a while longer, the silence between them not uncomfortable. Then Tom pressed his hands to his knees and turned to face her. "Come on. Are you ready to get started?"

"Sure," she replied, as he stood and offered her his hand. She took it, letting him pull her to her feet and following as he stepped towards the inn's heavy wooden doors.

Tom turned down the handle, a horrible grating sound meeting their ears as the door scraped open along the stone floor.

"Maybe I should start by looking at those hinges," she remarked. "Either they need an adjustment or we need to lop a few millimetres off the bottom of the door."

"Now that's something that does not need fixing," Tom returned. "All part of the –"

"Atmosphere?"

"Exactly. See - you're catching on already."

###

"You do realise that the TV won't suddenly switch off if you let go of that."

"Hmm?" Tom tears his eyes away from the jingle on the screen, following B'Elanna's amused gaze into his lap, where his right thumb sits possessively across the top of the remote control that he cradles in the palm of the same hand. "Oh, right." He lets her reach down and take it, accepting with gratitude the cold beer that she passes him in exchange.

"The movie's nearly two hours long," she says, placing the remote at the far end of the sofa before sitting herself down at his side. "So, you won't be needing to change the channel for a while either."

"But what about the volume?" he quibbles jovially, wrapping his free arm around her shoulders and pulling her in closer.

"Just fine as it is. We don't want to be on the receiving end of any more complaints about noise."

Tom can't argue with that. Chakotay had been pretty damn clear the last time he'd hauled them aside for a 'quiet word' that, as senior officers, they needed to show more respect for their near neighbours. And Tom has a pip to win back. "Well, as it's your choice of viewing tonight, I guess I can relinquish all rights to the remote for a couple of hours." And maybe three or four. He has post-movie plans that don't involve the TV.

A few nights of reasonably restful sleep in B'Elanna's bed have done far more to improve his state of mind than anything the Doctor could press into his neck. In fact, Tom has refused to accept any further doses of the neural suppressant that the Doc is still prescribing to many of the crew. While visuals of the massacre still intrude through his days, breaking into his thoughts at the most inconvenient of times – during a training session with Henley and Grimes in the _Flyer_, in the middle of a routine bridge evacuation drill with Tuvok – those episodes are becoming less frequent and less disruptive.

The hours he's spent redeveloping the characters of Fair Haven have been productive and uplifting. B'Elanna's efforts to assist have saved him from a lot of the grunt work – for the most part. And, when the Captain asked him to join her for breakfast in the mess hall this morning, he was able to accept graciously, putting to one side his anger over her orders at Tarakis. Captains make decisions that go against the grain all the time. He has to let his resentment go, just as he's had to in the past with numerous other decisions Janeway has made. It's easier to put things into perspective now that his emotions are not running quite so high.

As the movie's opening credits begin to roll, superimposed over what Tom believes to be a travel agents' window filled with images of the south of France, B'Elanna explains the background to her selection.

"It has a little of everything," she says. "Romance, action. The French Riviera for you. I'm surprised you've never seen it. The holographic version came out while I was at the Academy."

While he was on the _Exeter_ then, a freshly minted ensign with a glittering future. The _Ambassador_-class cruiser had been retrofitted with several holodecks, but Tom can't recall noticing any holographic adaptations of twentieth century Earth movies in that ship's database.

"I saw it twice in San Francisco over one weekend," B'Elanna goes on. "I'd had a particularly unpleasant few days and I wanted to get as far away from campus as I could without actually transporting to the other side of the planet."

"So, you transported back to the 1950s."

"It took my mind off things for a few hours at least."

He takes a sip of his beer while choosing his next words. "I'm a little surprised you'd want to watch the original movie given its association with your time at the Academy."

She ponders that for a moment. "I doubt I'd ever have gone looking for it if not for the TV. But, when you told me to pick something to watch today, it seemed like a good choice to go with. I'm betting I'll enjoy it more this time around, even if it isn't interactive."

The movie begins properly with an extremely distraught woman in a silk gown and hairnet decrying the theft of her jewellery. Her screeching sends a strong shudder through Tom – one would think from her reaction that she'd been confronted in her bedroom by the Borg – but, as the scene cuts away to a cat, and then a cat burglar, and then some further screaming – this time in French – he catches his breath and settles.

"Not interactive, huh?" he quips quietly, tightening his grip around B'Elanna still further.

"Sorry," she replies. "I'd forgotten about the screaming. But I think it's all done now."

And, thankfully, the piercing vocals do seem to be over as the story moves swiftly along.

"Definitely a good choice," Tom later agrees, his eyes feasting on the vibrant scenery of the Côte d'Azur and the classic cars, his ears approving of the double entendre-laden dialogue and the snatches of spoken French. His taste buds … well, in comparison they are somewhat deprived. The sight of Grace Kelly handing Cary Grant a chicken leg makes Tom's mouth water.

"Hey, you forgot the popcorn," he blurts out.

B'Elanna momentarily stiffens. "_I _forgot the popcorn?"

Correction. "_We _forgot the popcorn."

"You know where the replicator is."

And, with that, normal status is fully resumed. B'Elanna's kid gloves are back in storage. Another obstacle has been safely negotiated on the rocky road that they travel together. The incident at Tarakis may actually have done their relationship a favour. Tom lets out a laugh as B'Elanna snickers beside him.

And then he heads for that replicator.


End file.
